They paid for this tour

13/11/2009

John Lydon has lashed out at those who called him a sell-out for promoting Country Life Butter in what were some of the corniest ads in television history. The former Sex Pistol, who is about to perform gigs with his other band, Public Image Ltd, claimed that without the money from those ads he would have never been able to set up the gigs.

‘The money I got from that advert is the advance on this. Why are they questioning me?’ he asked the Camden New Journal. ‘What manual am I supposed to adopt? I'm promoting a British product which I'm very proud of. Anything I can do to help British industry is fine by me and in return you've got PiL.’

Their tour starts in just over a month at the O2 Academy in Birmingham, but what can you expect from the 80s cult legends?

‘This is PiL – my heart and soul,’ said Lydon. ‘It’s not like the Pistols where you learned the songs and they will be sort of what they should be. PiL’s will be as it should be.

‘We’ll be doing some newer bits and encompassing and focusing and entering and exiting. Expect extreme good taste, variety, voracity, honesty, excitability – a full gauntlet of all the emotions a human being can possibly go through. Songs that experience the tragedy of death to the joy of life.

‘There’s a full-on industry of musical escapades that PiL is responsible for, often copied, never duplicated, and never surpassed.’